BEDROOMS
In the rooms set aside for the purposes of rest and sleep, I venture to
remark that the ordinary builder, to say nothing of the ordinary
decorator, rises to his very worst heights of villainy, and makes the
task before us one of almost superhuman effort. I have had three of
these houses to live in, and in all of them, when the doors did not face
the only possible place to put the bed, they came exactly at the side of
the fire, and left no space whatever to put a sofa, let alone a
comfortable armchair should one be ill and have to remain in one’s room
longer than the hours which are set apart for repose. And as illness is
always possible, and moreover more than possible is it vain to ask when
further ‘eligible sites’ are cut up for building, that the landlords of
the future will kindly keep an eye on the
[Illustration: BEDROOM.]
plans and ensure the houses being built in such a way that it is
possible to live in them without an undue expenditure of money or
resources? How I should love to design just for once the small ideal
house with its square hall, capable of being used as an extra
sitting-room or a billiard-room, we need not then have the ‘three
reception-rooms’ which sound so grand and mean so little. Upstairs
should be three good bedrooms and a dressing-room, bath and day nursery;
the servants’ rooms and box-room in their turn above these, and whenever
possible, reached by a separate staircase. I see no reason why such a
house with reasonable and rational servants’ downstairs accommodation,
as already described, should be out of the reach of the usual suburban
resident with his £800 to £1000 a year.
If arranged in this compact and comfortable style, and if every
labour-saving appliance that is obtainable is introduced, the number of
servants required would be minimised. A great consideration in these
days, when though we are always being badgered to help the unemployed no
one seems able to get any servants, and, even if they are forthcoming,
they have to be paid double the old prices, while they do half the
amount of work. At least that is what I am always hearing. Personally, I
have never found any difficulty in obtaining all the maids I myself
require.
At the same time, if I were building ever so small a house, I should
undoubtedly have hot and cold water taps and a waste pipe in every
bedroom and dressing-room, and would even go as far as to have fixed
washing-stands there too. I would put at least one cupboard in each
room, also a window-seat, and, of course, the regulation tiled hearth
and slow-combustion stove with its tiled surround and its simple black
fender. The short curtains to the windows, the carefully-selected
pictures and ornaments, and the matted floor should all help to make the
work light, and to render it unnecessary to keep any superfluous number
of maids.
But we have at present to do with the suburban residence as it is and
not as it might be, and therefore it is not much use in dreaming about
perfection, for if we do we shall most certainly be disappointed, and do
no real good at all. We shall have to combat shrunken doors and
ill-fitting windows, poor grates and bad floors, and therefore the
sooner we set about remedying these faults the better it will be for us.
I do most certainly advise that whatever else is put up with, the usual
black wide-mouthed all-devouring grate may be altered and replaced with
some kind of a very simple slow-combustion one. These grates can be
bought for £3 or £4 at Shuffery’s in Welbeck Street, and will probably
save their cost in coal in one month’s use. Besides which they will
ensure the warmth and comfort which cannot possibly exist without them;
for pile on coal as we may on the grate of the past, the heat goes
mostly up the chimney, while the fuel is exactly as useful as regards
keeping the fire in, as would be leaves or pieces of paper. Our sole
occupation with such a grate is to jump up every five minutes and
prevent the fire from going out altogether, by putting on more coal,
and yet again more; until our patience, to say nothing of our coal
supply, gives out most completely. I have recently spent some months in
the company of such a grate, and I can assure my readers I have not had
a pleasant time of it. I happened to be obliged to have a fire in all
night, and I had no sooner gone comfortably to sleep than the cold
roused me again to find that the wretched thing had gone out or almost
out, notwithstanding that half an hour before I had not only fed it
copiously with coal, but put briquettes in considerable numbers into its
vast and hungry jaws. Briquettes which will as a rule keep in the fire
for nearly twelve hours were useless here, and I have been therefore
confirmed in my deadly hatred against these grates by my sufferings at
their hands during a long and most exceptionally severe winter.
Once more, I can assure my readers as regards the grates, that it is
absolutely no use to temporise; and that both the one in the day nursery
and that in the best bedroom must go, even if it cannot be managed that
the grates in the other upstairs rooms can be changed; while let
nothing persuade anyone to have gas stoves erected. They are both
cheerless and unhealthy, albeit I know they are a great saving in
trouble, that they are now properly ventilated, and that they can be
turned on and off at a moment’s notice, and can be so regulated that the
proper temperature for all rooms--60 degrees--can be maintained either
at night or day. But I cannot breathe in any house where gas is allowed
to warm the air. I know plants never last in such an atmosphere, as my
plants do, and that, moreover, wherever gas stoves are employed largely,
anyone in that special place is pale, wan and susceptible to cold.
Indeed, the more I see of any attempt to heat our rooms otherwise than
by open fires, the more I am convinced that such attempts are harmful
and unsuccessful, and that, therefore, coal and wood fires should be
‘our only wear,’ at least until some genius invents something better and
less costly. At the same time I don’t see why anyone need make such
attempts--given the proper grates--for nothing can take the place of a
cheery blaze, which apart from its health-giving properties, always
seems to greet us when we enter the room, is a delightful companion, and
oftentimes provides us with a pleasant occupation should we be bored or
tired. For nothing is more pleasing than to feed a good-tempered blaze
until it laughs and chuckles at us as it goes rollicking up the chimney
on its way to the outer air.
Then the last thing at night it can be banked up and left, rather
dull-looking perhaps and surly and sad; but when the early morning comes
one poke of the judiciously-applied poker and out leaps the eager blaze;
a few good knobs of coal are put on, and in less than five minutes back
comes our cheery friend, making even a foggy morning bright and
cheerful, and a wet or snowy one vivacious if nothing else, under its
bright and charming influence. What stove, what emotionless gas glitter
can be anything save prosaic in comparison? while I am certain health
suffers where anything save a proper fire is ordinarily employed.
A careful tenant can keep the landlord’s grates and replace them when he
leaves, but I never think this is worth the expense, the principal
expense about changing the grates being the fixing them; at the same
time, I cannot say too often that we shall not want to move in the
insensate manner in which suburban residents do move nowadays, if we
make ourselves comfortable at first, and do not sit down to discomfort,
with that depressing sentence on our lips--‘After all, it’s only for
three years, and therefore it is not worth while!’
Having begun our reform by putting in new and decent grates, we can turn
our attention to the doors and windows and the floor. The draughts must
be excluded by ‘Slater’s patent,’ and the floor properly stopped, and
moreover planed if rough; while should the door show gaps, as I once
knew one to do, in a manner which allowed the unfortunate owner to
perceive, without opening it, whether the gas was burning in the hall
outside or not, these gaps must be stopped, either by inserting slips of
wood, or with putty, or some sort of stopping: the door, as usual,
being covered inside and out by the ever-useful, ever-faithful and most
decorative _portière_. I cannot understand the firm and pugnacious way
in which the ordinary householder clings to his bare and undraped doors,
and will not avail himself of the shelter and warmth which can be
obtained in no other way. It cannot be the expense. Wallace supplies the
rods at 4½d. a foot, the brackets cost about 4½d. each, and as a yard
and a quarter of double-width material suffices for the ordinary
suburban door, though I advise an extra half width; and this costs, at
the outside, 5s.; I see no reason why this should not be put over even
the humblest suburban door in the world. As it cannot be the cost, I can
but come to the conclusion that as usual paterfamilias has interfered, a
thing no man should do in a house on the matter of decoration and
management. He may give an opinion if he is asked for one: though he is
most judicious who takes care that that opinion coincides with that of
his wife, so if he has been hardy enough to veto the _portière_, he must
be gently, but firmly, shown that it is not stuffy--the thermometer
will do that--and that neither is it a dust-trap. This can be
demonstrated in a few minutes by taking it down before his eyes, and
having it removed, shaken, and replaced all in less time than it takes
to tell of it. If after this he objects to moving it on one side as he
enters the door, he must be carefully trained to see how ridiculous such
a notion is, the while it is casually mentioned that an entrance to a
room is not to be effected in the same way one takes a five-barred gate.
This is a lesson all men can be taught just as many of them have been
taught, thanks to me, that the hall need not be strewed with hats,
gloves and brushes, and hung with coats and waterproofs in the last
stages of dissolution, and that they can be quite as happy with their
raiment out of sight as ever they were when they were allowed to strew
it about in their entrances, at their own sweet wills. It is, however,
usually impossible to live in an ordinary suburban house unless the
furniture be made, in a measure for that special abode. For the rooms
are so awkward and tiny that ‘combination’ furniture must be employed,
or else one cannot have space to move.
No bed should ever be draped in any way. If the bedroom is properly
arranged and ventilated, while all draughts are excluded, curtains
cannot be required, and no bed need present a starved or undecorated
appearance if pictures are properly arranged behind it, or a bookcase
hung on the wall above it, and the pillows properly put into frilled
cases, and placed during the day high up on under pillows. At night the
look of the bed behind the sleepers cannot trouble them, but it will be
all right if, as I said before, pictures are hung properly, just, and
only just above the top rail of the plain and simple brass bed, the only
kind which should ever be allowed in any house. If brass is too dear,
then plain iron must replace it; the iron can be Aspinalled ‘real
ivory,’ and so be made to look quite superior in every way, should the
plain black iron be objected to.
I am quite shocked to see that a strenuous effort is being made to
revive the beautiful, but unhealthy, wooden bedsteads of our ancestors,
but I do hope someone will form an ‘anti-wooden bed league,’ and scotch
the thing in its very earliest days, for there are people who will buy
anything if assured by an enterprising tradesman that it is the newest
thing out, and that a similar article was sold to a member of the
aristocracy during the last week or so. Now, the very idea of the
newness should warn off any wary buyer, for a new thing cannot have been
really tried and found successful, while anyone can be fairly sure that
a thing which has been sold, and sold largely for ten or more years,
must be a success in one way or the other.
Really it does seem a little late in the century to combat the vast
disadvantages of wooden bedsteads! still, it must certainly be done,
else once more shall we have to put up with them, to the great detriment
of our health. Just think how impossible it would be to make a wooden
bed absolutely safe should infectious disease seize the owner! Then too
it encourages insects, and is open to all sorts of other objections
which those who think can discover for themselves. Therefore stick to
brass and iron and the excellent wire-woven mattresses, which only need
supplementing with a really good hair mattress to make an ideal couch,
particularly if we see the latter is turned every day, and moved from
the head to the foot of the bed, to ensure an equal amount of wear.
The simpler the furniture in a bedroom, the better it will be for the
owner thereof, and if she can visit Hewetson and have real old
Chippendale toilet-tables and washing-stands and wardrobes she should
certainly do so; if not she should buy new things made on similar lines,
and these she can always find at Smee & Cobay’s, while for good plain
furniture in a less expensive make, Wallace is always available, and
should certainly be consulted on this ever-fascinating subject.
But I am indeed thankful to have to note that the brief reign of
brightly-enamelled and coloured bedroom furniture is now at an end, as
dead as the peacock’s feather and the Japanese fan, and the dreadful
stuffed storks and chenille monkeys so dear to the heart of the
would-be artistic woman. Enamel is most excellent and useful if we must
have the plain deal furniture, which we used to have to buy grained and
varnished, and of an awful sickly yellow brown that would have ruined
any room. But in this case we must buy the furniture in the plain wood
‘primed for painting,’ and either ask the upholsterer to follow our
directions implicitly, or else have it home in this state, and paint it
ourselves or turn on the handy man, without whom no suburban residence
can be made in the least degree habitable, unless we can afford reckless
expenditure, in which case we should hardly take up our residence in a
similar abode. If this style of furniture be gone in for, it should be
recollected that there are only two shades of enamel which can be used
in a would-be artistic house for this purpose, and those are ‘electric
turquoise’ and ‘real ivory.’ Green pink and yellow are truly terrible,
and cannot be excused. Plain brown stain is bearable but I do not advise
it, while let no one attempt to use an amateur green stain on any
account. It is a failure at once and makes any room abominable because
of its pretentiousness, for as I have said before, the beautiful green
stain made familiar to us by Liberty first, can only be obtained from a
professional hand, an amateur cannot get it, try how he may to do so.
Now there are about three ways of decorating a suburban bedroom, though
of course the details as regards special papers and special furniture
can be varied infinitely. At the same time no one should make the fatal
mistake of treating such a house or such rooms either in the Moorish,
Japanese or Old Empire style, or in any eccentric fashion at all.
Neither way can be suitable for it. Indeed, I do not care for the jumble
of styles made by having an eastern-looking hall, an Old English
dining-room, a Queen Anne drawing-room and a Moorish landing, which is
so inexpressively dear to the would-be artistic decorator, and I can but
suggest that my readers will resist the temptation of similar
eccentricities to the very utmost, contenting themselves with the simple
furniture kept by my pet firms, and using this in connection with the
papers and paint which are specially made and designed to go with the
different styles. If a really good hand-made floral paper can be
afforded, nothing can approach it for bedroom decoration; but the
printed cheap imitations must not be looked at for one moment, for they
cannot possibly be the success the others are. Where a floral bedroom
fails to charm, it is always because the paper is just not quite right,
because every detail has not been thought out and carried out to the
very smallest item, or because a timid person has advised on the
subject, or the advice has been given by someone who does not understand
the subject. Now to obtain success, Jeffrey’s papers or Knowles’s or
Haines’s must be used, and here let me name some which are always in
stock, and which can always be procured. First of all is Haines’s
‘ragged robin,’ a French paper on a soft ground, which is perfect; then
comes Jeffrey’s clematis in different shades and combinations of colour,
my pet one being the mauve and green I have already mentioned, while
Knowles’s ‘rose’ and dahlia papers are beautiful, as are Godfrey
Giles’s, and although the cost is awful we must not forget Mr Smee’s
magnificent ‘Hamilton,’ albeit that could only be used as a frieze, as
it is something like 10s. or 12s. a piece. Having chosen the floral
paper the dado should be either in cretonne which matches the paper
exactly; or else a dado should be made like a deep flounce in some plain
material. If we select the cretonne, it must be run round the room so
that the pattern goes in a different way to that on the wall, and the
window curtains must match precisely. But should we select what Godfrey
Giles calls the ‘Muriel’ curtain dado, the curtains should be in plain
linen and lace, as should the table-covers, mantel drapery, and any
cushion covers we may have in the room. Unless we use Miss Goodban’s new
linen and flax curtains, draperies, etc.; these, of course, are much
more expensive, but then they are ideal, and the bedspreads at any rate
should not be forgotten, for they wash and wear better than any others I
have ever come across.
Then too the ware should match the flowers employed in the decoration;
and in all floral rooms, save where blue and yellow are employed
together, the floor should have either one of Wallace’s square green
carpets--the only green carpets on which one can absolutely rely to be
always correct and always the same--or else plain cream matting or the
green ‘Isis’ matting should fit the room as the old-fashioned carpets
used to, supplemented of course with a certain amount of rugs
judiciously arranged, and not put down in straight lines each side of
the bed or in front of the toilet-table and washing-stand and fireplace,
as they are all too often arranged by those who do not understand the
matter. The paint should always be the exact shade of the ground of
these floral papers, and this generally shades from pale ivory to still
paler _café-au-lait_. Not that I mean for one moment that the paint in
one room should be anything save one even surface of colour, but that as
a rule the shade of the ground of these papers differs one from the
other, and that whatever shade is chosen for the ground, that and that
only must be taken as a guide for the paint for the room itself.
Further, all cornices must be coloured cream and all ceilings, save
those just written of, should be papered in some pretty and inexpensive
ceiling paper, which, as a rule, in ‘floral rooms,’ should be Jeffrey’s
‘tie’ paper in pale green and white.
The best furniture for these rooms is Wallace’s set of green-stained
furniture with tiles to match the shade selected in the wall paper; that
is to say if we select pink and green, the tiles should be absolutely
plain pale pink in the palest shade of coral pink, and if we have yellow
and green, the tiles should be yellow; while if plain dados and curtains
are used, the colour for these should be green as should the carpets.
These rules should apply to any combination of colour we may select, the
only exception being if we should have blue and yellow. Then blue must
be our foundation, so to speak, while the tiles must be yellow and
patternless, and the furniture in some good dark wood, such as walnut or
Chippendale mahogany, my pet wood of all the woods one can buy.
If we select real Chippendale furniture, we should not have a floral
room, although it would be correct to have one of the strange and to me
hideous Chinese papers Knowles sells, and which were, I believe, the
only correct wall papers at that special date, and which should be used
with chintz, not cretonne, curtains. But then it would be still more
correct to paint and panel the walls, and that would be singularly out
of place in a suburban bedroom; unless we fell upon one of Mr Ernest
Newton’s little houses, when we should probably find the panelling ready
for us and have nothing to do but paint it. Still I never can bear a
plain painted wall, or one that is colour-washed or plainly papered.
Such a room can never look really furnished, and has a most depressing
effect; and in consequence I always advise paper; for, after all one had
better be comfortable than correct. If we were absolutely correct, by
the way, and remorselessly turned our backs on all anachronisms, we
should have bow windows with tiny panes, rush-strewn floors and all
sorts of detestable things which have long since vanished along with the
‘bad old times’ which gave them birth. Therefore as we will not be
severely correct, we should have either an ivory anaglypta dado, and
above that a ‘sea-green’ paper from Knowles or Smee & Cobay: or we
should have an anaglypta ceiling coloured real ivory, and all sea-green
finishings-off, as suggested before. Also we can use a really beautiful
old-world material called linen damask, which can be bought of Smee, and
which is a washable imitation of the damasks used by our ancestors, only
in really beautiful colours, and not in the crude and awful greens,
blues and reds which were so dear to their hearts. If the bedroom is
sunless this green idea must be most studiously avoided; and yellow must
take its place, arranged either with a dado or frieze of the anaglypta,
or else with nut-brown paint and a brown linen curtain dado and yellow
printed damask curtains.
A dado is far more useful in a bedroom than a frieze, for it saves the
base of the wall from the tender mercies of the housemaid, and allows
the bed to be placed against the wall, which is by far the best position
for any bed; for, placed with the head and one side against the wall, it
cannot take up half the space it does when stuck out into the middle of
the room, as so many beds all too often do. I would by the way, most
strongly recommend the beds which are known as ‘twin bedsteads,’ and
which allow two people occupying one room to sleep quite independently
of each other’s movements, and which are therefore most invaluable in
every way. There is no greater misery than for a restless person to have
to control his or her every movement for fear of disturbing a bedfellow,
no greater misery than for a quiet sleeper to be aroused every moment by
some impatient gesture from a restless one: and all drawbacks are
removed by having these twin bedsteads, which make each individual
sleeper comfortable, and which also are very simple and well devised
without any undue amount of embellishments.
Beds, by the way, should always be thoroughly dusted once a week, the
entire bedding being removed for that purpose; while twice or three
times a year the ironwork should be taken apart and well washed with
Sanitas or carbolic soap, not because there is any chance of strange
visitors having taken up their abode there, but because in no other way
can one ensure the spotless dustlessness, to coin a word, that makes a
house as healthy as it should most undoubtedly be. The third manner of
decorating a bedroom, and the least expensive, is to take some definite
colour--such as blue, yellow or pink--and ‘live up’ to that, and that
only in that special room, taking care to choose an inexpensive paper in
the right shade, and not deviating from it in the smallest degree. For
example, the blue should be ‘electric turquoise,’ and none other.
Knowles has always inexpensive papers the right shade, and if we avoid
the detestable ‘feather’ which is dreadful, we shall be all right. Then
the paint should be ‘electric turquoise.’ We should have a yellow and
white ceiling paper, and should have Wallace’s blue ‘lily’ or ‘iris’
square carpet, taking care to have a woollen fringe round it and a
stained surround; using as always, Jackson’s invaluable varnish stains.
If the room be light, we can use Burnett’s Bolton sheeting in the same
blue, with a ‘turned-over’ top of the new-patterned sheeting to
harmonise; but if it is dark and sunless the curtains should be yellow,
in a similar material, although nothing should induce anyone to have
coloured muslin curtains should the windows require a second set. All
muslin curtains should be white, or at most only a faint shade of
cream, and muslin curtains should be in all windows; upstairs and down;
edged with very-softly-falling frills; unless the windows are
‘Caldecott’ ones, and therefore only require the one short set of
material ones, which can be easily drawn and undrawn as required. In the
blue room I am very fond of ash furniture and this can be bought at
Wallace’s quite well, but avoid here as elsewhere the ordinary chests of
drawers, or my pet abomination, a chest of drawers to be used as
toilet-table too; neither, under any circumstances, must a toilet-table
be placed in the window; neither must ‘half blinds’ be indulged in.
These two things look more vulgar than I can say, and are to be
studiously avoided by anyone who cares about the outside appearance of
her house.
If yellow be fixed on, we can have a real orange damasque paper, and
ivory or brown paint, green carpet, curtains and furniture, or we can
have ‘buttercup’ yellow, with ‘earth brown’ paint, matting and rugs, or
else a brown square ‘Dunelm’ carpet from Wallace, Liberty’s brown and
yellow Java cretonne, and walnut or mahogany furniture. Or yet again
the paint can be real ivory, the carpet and curtains blue, and the
furniture ‘real ivory’ too, in fact a little taste and common-sense will
provide an artistic room for any furniture that my readers may already
possess.
If pink is chosen, there is only one paper I can really recommend as to
colour, and that is a very old one: Pither’s bay tree: which could be
used with ivory paint, a deep frieze of Knowles’s ‘rose-garland,’ and
cretonne curtains to match, and here without any doubt at all we should
have a green carpet and Chippendale mahogany furniture. I am very often
asked by young girls about to get married what they can be working for
their future homes, and I always say, ‘very little,’ unless they have
already made up their minds what furniture they are to have, and how
their rooms are to be decorated; because if they have a large stock of
pretty things, pretty in themselves, they may find themselves either
unable to use them at all or obliged to do so in rooms in which they
become frightful at once, because they are utterly out of place. A room
cannot be a success unless every detail dovetails and harmonises, and
where the bedspreads, cushions and toilet-covers live in harmony with
their neighbours; the curtains, paper and paint. However it is always
safe to choose certain papers, such as those I have mentioned, and to
work bedspreads to match, while, if we select pink as our leading
colour, or yellow or blue, the flax and linen cushions and covers I have
spoken of as prepared for work or worked by Miss Goodban can always
provide occupation. Neither must it be forgotten that initials must be
embroidered on the house linen, and that sets of sheets and towels must
be kept for each room, and duly embellished with monograms in
appropriate shades of Duncan’s excellent washing silks.
Where a house fails to be a real success, be sure it is because some
detail has been forgotten, and under these circumstances let no one rest
until it is remembered and carried out. And here I am sure, is a great
opening for an artistic woman with a keen eye for effect--if only she
could persuade some of our larger upholsterers to employ her--for such
a woman is badly wanted to go round every newly-furnished house, and
note down as she goes the small things which will invariably escape the
best male eye in the world, and even the eye of the best decorator. She
will, pocket-book in hand, note the differences in the paint, which
always occur where Aspinall is not used, the bolt or knob forgotten
there, the curtain placed in the wrong room, the _portière_ that has
been left out, and she will finally put the last touches which none but
a woman can, and which in some mysterious manner turn a house into the
home it can always be made by anyone who really and truly understands
the science. But nothing must be passed over; no doubt it takes time and
thought to obtain perfection, still both are to be had, ay, even in the
shoddy villa of the suburbs. But there must be no temporising, no ‘it
doesn’t matter, it’s only for a short time.’ Neither must draughty doors
and windows be allowed to remain; if so, pneumonia will come to stay,
chronic colds will be our portion, and we shall be miserable from the
moment we enter the house until we pass out of it in search of another,
where we shall only once more meet with a similar fate; for the ‘move
on, please!’ of the policeman is not worse or more constant than the
silent hint given by the suburban villa that it is not in any way a
suitable place of residence for us and ours, if we have not really
circumvented its idiosyncrasies and made the very best of an absolutely
bad job. Remember too, the great help a screen is in every bedroom which
is big enough to have one without over-crowding, that one can easily
have too many pictures and ornaments which encourage dust and enrage the
housemaid, and that even the soiled linen basket should be chosen
carefully. In these happy days, cheap things are quite as prettily
designed as expensive ones, and if we take our time, know our shops and
our own minds, and set to work carefully, there is nothing to prevent us
nowadays from having a quite perfect house, and that without any undue
expenditure of money or time.